A brief China recall in a blend of experiences and thoughts

By Huma Sheikh

China gives me a ‘home-like’ feeling


I AM HOME again was how Beijing looked like to me as I disembarked from the bus to the by lane leading towards hotel from the airport. Wide roads, people huddled in lanes, boys paired up on roadsides chatting and anxiously waiting for a quick glimpse of beautiful girls walking around all came alive as I landed in Beijing on November 6. The scene made it almost impossible for me to stay indoors even after my arrival at 10 pm from as far away place as Honolulu and the excitement headed me to a nearby restaurant.

A few of my friends also joined me and suddenly the jet lag faded away as the time set up in China suited me because it is only a few hours ahead of my home country India. Making our way to a restaurant we intended to have some snacks and coffee but the aroma in the room increased our appetite even if we had enough of food on the plane during 16 hours journey. The food was fantastic. I don’t eat pork and one of my friends who is from Hong Kong helped me order the food and also for the group before she headed off to the hotel. Another friend ordered fried rice and both of us decided to pack back some of it but it was so tasty that we had it all over there. We cleaned our plates and even wanted to have more.

On my way back, I traveled around to make sure I am in Beijing and not India but there was hardly any difference between the two. The next day we set off on a Beijing exploration mission. We were split into learning groups with some task to do in an effort to make ourselves aware about some places of significant importance as well as some commonly used activities and games and way of living in Beijing. The assignment was also measured on the basis of work and research each group had done and the winning team announced by the APLP staff was the one with the highest number of accurate answers.

Day two was a little bit academic. We (APLPeers G8) started off purchasing some tickets for our nine-day China GIST travel. I bought the tickets for my Scrambling Scribers team before we started off to discover Beijing. We--my learning group comprised five people, including me, and four of us were completely new to China-- had some outline to follow to acquire some points but for us exploring China was awesome. Although we were not the highest point takers, we were quite satisfied with what we did—we visited places as historic as Tiananmen Square, went to Russian Market, shopping malls and had food at a very good Chinese restaurant. The day culminated in meeting up with the staff at Tiananmen Square, which was followed up by dinner.

On Day three we toured to Beiwai to join participants from CFAU, BeiWai, Tsinghua, Beida and Renmin universities who delivered speeches as part of the ‘Joint Workshop on China and the Future’.

Day Four was quite exciting-- I visited Forbidden City with a guide provided for our group of six. We were together until we walked down half Forbidden City and disbursed in crowd. I lost sight of almost all group mates, including our guide, except Kamal who was with me taking pictures.

However, it was a blessing in disguise as both of us—Kamal and I—had a chance ride a rickshaw and bus all alone. The interesting part of our journey was how I managed to win an argument with a rickshaw puller even if I didn’t know Chinese.

We got onto a rickshaw from Forbidden City exit gate to subway, intending to take it to the hotel. The rickshaw puller, in an attempt to bluff us, after taking all the money stopped the rickshaw halfway and pretended his cycle tyre was broken. He called another rickshaw puller and something conspired between them in Chinese. As another rickshaw puller dropped us to some other unknown place and not subway, he asked for money, triggering an argument. Although the scene was weird as I justified our stand with gestures and some signs, the rickshaw puller had to give up finally. THE MOMENT WAS THE MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT OF MY LIFE. I WILL ALWAYS CHERISH IT.

We had CCPIT meetings on November 10, which culminated in a grand dinner hosted by APLP alumni hosted by Zhao Zhenge and Lin Honghong (G2). And the final day in Beijing on November 11 before we left for China GIST on Nov 12, was devoted to Tsinghua University where Director of Brooklyn Institute gave presentation on China and its development and economy at John Thornton Leadership Center . The lecture was of great help to literate us more deeply about China before China GIST.